controversy. Legal charges of blasphemy Gdańsk activists of the right-wing League of Polish Families began a petition to the local authorities to open a legal case following the release of television footage of the exhibition. Complaints about Pasja led to Nieznalska's being summoned to report to the local police on 2 March 2002. The city's rightist municipal councilors quickly closed the exhibition while the young artist, insisting that her intention was to focus on "the cult of the male body", became the defendant of a trial concerning Nieznalska's alleged violation of the criminal code. Nieznalska's upcoming exhibits in Słupsk and Ostrów Wielkopolski were cancelled after further intervention from the League of Polish Families. Members of the nationalist youth group Młodzież Wszechpolska threatened to "hang such artists" and "shave their heads, like the Home Army did with women who were in close relationships with [the] Germans" At the conclusion of the first legal process in 2003, the court found Nieznalska guilty of "offending religious feelings", a violation of the ban on blasphemy within Article 196 of the criminal code. Judge Tomasz Zieliński denied that Nieznalska's work was entitled to any special constitutional protection as an object of art, stating that "the fact that a work is within the boundaries of art has no significance for whether it can offend the feelings of other people." The court ordered Nieznalska to perform six months of unpaid community service. The trial prosecutor had originally demanded a fine of 2000 złoty, but the court decided to increase the penalty. Judge Zieliński additionally forbade Nieznalska from traveling out of the country. The local deputies of the League of Polish Families present during the sentencing clapped to express their approval. Controversy surrounding Nieznalska's installation, already boiling during the initial trial, persisted well into the appeals process. An unsigned editorial in Poland's Anglophone monthly The Warsaw Voice, summing up the court case shortly after the initial verdict as a battle between the left and right - albeit "the first of its kind" for modern Poland - treated Nieznalska as "a tasteless provocateur, covering up her lack of genuine talent with shock tactics" and cited the opinion of Franciszek Starowieyski, "one of the best-known Polish sculptors, himself rather partial to unconventional works", who "said before the beginning of the lawsuit that the one to blame was not the novice artist but the curator of the Gdańsk gallery. According to